


Petoskey

by ofthesun



Category: Pentatonix, Superfruit
Genre: Drunkenness, Gen, Missing Persons, Police, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 18:28:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9505361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofthesun/pseuds/ofthesun
Summary: Scott wakes up disoriented and freezing in a room he's never seen before.





	

Scott wakes up disoriented and freezing in a room he's never seen before. He sits up slowly, woozy and dizzy as the blood begins to rush up to his head to keep him up. The walls are a pale cream colour and he's wrapped in a white duvet. He tugs the blanket out of the side of the bed where it's tucked and pulls himself to a sitting position at the side of the bed.

The room looks like a generic motel room and he's absolutely baffled because while he's seen variations of this dozens of times on tour, his last memory before this is at his and Mitch's home in LA. He has no idea how he got here and he rubs the sleep out of his eyes.

When enough blood has flowed to his head for him to handle standing, he rises to his feet, bringing the duvet with him, and stumbles towards the window. The heater is pressing hot air and metal to his ankles, and he pulls back the paisley curtains to reveal a snowstorm. He glances around the outside, and the snow is pouring down so heavily, he's never seen anything like it. It's a fucking blizzard. The snow is deep on the ground, too. Tree trunks look disproportionately shortened and the base of the building is wrapped in white, buried in the snow. All he can see is what appears to be a courtyard within the hotel he's staying. He sees rows and rows of identical windows, wrapping around the visible square, along with trees and benches centred in the small yard. It's monotonous and unfamiliar and he doesn't like it.

Scott walks away from the window, trying to find even a hint of where he is and what's going on. There's a small desk aligned with the base of the bed, equipped with an out-of-date landline phone, a pen, and a pad of paper. The paper reads "Days Inn" and has a 231 number printed on it. He scrunches his face together in confusion. He's never heard any phone number with that area code. He gets up and retreats to the nightstand beside the bed. All there is there is a clock reading '10:07 a.m.' and a drawer with a bible in it. His phone is nowhere in sight.

He moves toward the entryway of the room. The door to the bathroom is propped partially open and he pushes it the rest of the way open, slipping in through the small space. A small handbag that he recognises as Mitch's is left abandoned on the counter beside the sink, open and spilling out a small pile of papers. He reaches in and pulls them out the rest of the way, sifting through them.

The top paper is a cardstock plane ticket designating travel from LAX to Harbor Springs Airport, priced at $250 one-way. Scott has never heard of that airport and he doesn't remember buying plane tickets or flying in the last month, either. He's also not sure where Mitch is, seeing as though his handbag is here so he is presumably also here.

The rest of the pages are setlists and printed out emails about tour. They're all leftover from the last tour, outdated and unnecessary to really be hanging onto at this point. Scott just folds them slightly neater and jams them back into the handbag. There's nothing else in there besides the papers, so he closes the button on the top and grabs the handbag to take with him as he returns to the room.

He unravels the comforter from his body and tosses it back onto the bed, setting the handbag atop it. His loose joggers and t-shirt are rumpled from being slept in and wrapped up, and he has to hunt through the bottom sheet on the bed to find his other sock. He finds his sandals abandoned at the door by the entry, a keycard and his wallet tucked in the left one. He pockets the card and wallet, and slides his feet into the sandals as he exits the room.

The corridor is quiet and almost feels emptier than his hotel room. Scott finds the elevator at the end of it and jabs the buttons with a shaking finger to travel to the ground floor.

When Scott reaches the lobby, there's a muted, buzzing hum of life. A middle-aged receptionist types feverishly, and an elderly couple is seated at the couch that's accompanied by a coffee table. The lobby is small and plain and a TV is playing what he presumes is the local news. The anchor is talking about an ice fishing accident that almost killed a man, and still, none of it makes sense. He seats himself at the small armchair adjacent to the couch, staring at the screen, trying to mentally coerce it into giving him some information.

If by the grace of God himself, the typing suddenly stops and the receptionist begins flicking through channels to find something to watch. She passes through several soap operas and a few other news stations before settling on CNN. The now-familiar anchors discuss blizzards plaguing northern areas of the country, disclosing focus points in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan. He leans forwards, squinting at the TV. Suddenly, the screen flashes bright red and a new anchor appears as the words 'breaking news' flash across the screen in all capitals.

"New information has come about in the missing person case of Scott Hoying. The twenty-five-year-old man disappeared from his Los Angeles home last Tuesday at approximately 3:30am. He was reportedly intoxicated and incoherent at the time of his disappearance, and it is believed that his disappearance followed an altercation with roommate Mitch Grassi. Grassi reports that he appears to have made off with nothing besides his wallet and a handbag containing papers of no significance, and that his phone remains at their L.A. home. Hoying was last seen by witnesses operating an automated sale machine at the Los Angeles International Airport at around 5:09am the same morning. As of this morning, an airport employee disclosed that she believes to have seen him heading towards terminals 7 and 8, which contained several flights to both Ohio and Michigan. Search parties have been sent out in the areas surrounding the airports in which flights from terminals 7 and 8 were received at."

Scott stares blankly at the TV, baffled by what he's seeing. The elderly couple looks from the photo of him on the screen and back at him several times before the woman says to him, "that young man looks quite like you, doesn't he?" Scott turns his head towards her, mouth still ajar, and nods inconclusively. "Well, I certainly hope they find him," she resolves, returning to watch the TV with her husband. After a moment, the TV finally pulls his picture down and resumes its coverage of other news. He quickly gets up and approaches the receptionist's desk.

"Excuse me, m'am, what day is it?" he asks nervously.

She pulls her glance away from the computer screen, fingers still typing, and narrows her eyes at him. "It's Sunday, January 29, 2017."

"Would you, um, happen to know where exactly this hotel is?" he adds, slightly intimidated.

"We're in Petoskey, Michigan. Are you okay, kid?" she snaps. She's stopped typing by now and her full, undivided attention is on him. He swallows hard.

"Yeah, I'm- I'm fine. Thanks," he says, partingly. He quickly walks away from the desk and towards the elevator, desperate to escape the uncomfortable situation. He punches in the up button and quickly steps into the elevator.

As soon as he's out of earshot, the receptionist retrieves the receiver of the landline and dials 911. "I'm calling to report a suspicious person at the Days Inn in Petoskey. He was at least 6 feet tall with blond hair, seemed pretty young, and approached our front desk in a disoriented manner, not seeming to know the day it was or where he was."

Meanwhile, Scott retreats to the hotel room, jamming his keycard into three doors and failing before finding his room. He sits on the bed and rubs his face, slightly distressed by the whole situation. He can't remember anything besides waking up this morning, and he apparently walked out drunk on Mitch five days ago at some ungodly time of day. He then, apparently, flew across the country and checked into a hotel, and hasn't had a clear thought until now. His mind is moving about a mile a minute, and none of it is adding up.

He's pulled out of his thoughts by the sound of a knock on the door. He gets up and approaches it, the confusion hitting him like a cherry on top of the total absence of sense in his life of the last five days. When he pulls the door open, two police officers and the receptionist stand before him.

"This is him," she says, pointing straight at him. One police officer approaches him calmly and slowly, handcuffing him.

"You're not under arrest, but we are going to take you to the station because we've gotten reports of you acting strangely and suspiciously," the other officer explains to him. Scott's too astonished to respond, and he lets himself be led to the elevator, down and out through the lobby, and tucked into the backseat of a police cruiser.

As the two officers drive, the scanner announces reports and calls for police, and he sits silently in the seat. The scanner reports of a search party being sent out in the Petoskey area for Scott Hoying, and it's all he can do to sink down a little further in his seat, still so, so confused.

At the police station, they remove him from the car and bring him into the front waiting room of the station, placing him in a plastic chair usually reserved for those visiting or waiting. He hears one of the officers reassure the front desk receptionist that he isn't dangerous, that a hotel just said he seemed disoriented and lost. A joke is cracked about him being that drunk guy who went missing from L.A. He can see the receptionist peer over the officer's shoulder, meeting his eye.

"Oh, God, David, that _is_ the guy from the L.A. missing person case!" The two officers whirl around and walk over to him.

"What's your name, son?" the first officer prompts

"Scott Hoying," he says quietly. The two officers exchange a look, then instruct him to get up, and the one leads him by the handcuffs to a door within the station. He listens in silence as the other officer rattles off a code over walkie-talkie and reports, "I think we've got our guy, right here."

The next period of time is a blur of answering basic questions about what he remembers (which, isn't very much) and waiting while new police officers come in and out of the room, looking at him and asking questions. He stares at the floor and it all melts together in his brain. All he can think about is how much he wants to go home. The door opens and an officer comes in, followed by someone dressed entirely differently and out of any sort of uniform. He looks up, only to be met with Mitch's warm, but sad smile.

"Scott," Mitch says weakly, reaching to hug Scott, disregarding instructions from police to not touch him.

"Thank god, you're safe," Mitch murmurs, burying his face in Scott's shoulder.


End file.
